At his confirmation hearings as CIA before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 7, John Brennan was encouraged by Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein to recount the no doubt horrid crimes of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen assassinated by the Administration’s killer drone program. Brennan’s response? “I would prefer not to at this time.”
Afterwords
“Bartleby” is narrated by Bartleby’s employer, who ultimately dismisses him for his lack of cooperation, only to discover that Bartleby is living in the office! He ultimately has Bartleby jailed for trespassing. Gnawed by guilt, he visits Bartleby in jail and discovers that he now prefers not to eat. After Bartleby’s death, he investigates Bartleby’s past and learns that Bartleby once had a patronage job in the Post Office, in the “dead letter office,” losing the job after a change in administrations. Melville frames the issue as only he could:
Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring—the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a banknote sent in swiftest charity—he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letters sped to death.
Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
